Jones Is `Black Moon` Rising Star

January 24, 1986|The New York Times

Tommy Lee Jones has been making movies for years, but until now he was better known for co-starring with famous actresses (Back Roads with Sally Field, Coal Miner`s Daughter with Sissy Spacek) than for occupying the limelight by himself.

But in Black Moon Rising, a new action film, he is indisputably the star. With his handsome, battered face and tough, former football player`s body, Jones is thoroughly credible as Quint, a free-lance professional thief working for the government on high-risk assignments just the other side of the law.

``I thought it would be fun to do a simple action-adventure movie,`` says the 39-year-old actor. ``I love fast cars, pretty girls, ugly bad guys, big guns and chase scenes in a movie.``

Black Moon Rising has all of the above in quantity, which makes it fairly standard for such a film. Jones, however, has a somewhat unexpected profile for that kind of rough-and-ready hero: although he was born and raised in Texas, the son of a policewoman and an oil field worker, he went to an elite Dallas prep school and graduated cum laude from Harvard as an English major, spending the early years of his career as a stage actor in New York before moving on to Hollywood. But five years ago he went home again, and now lives on a 3,000-acre cattle ranch in San Saba County, Texas.